musings of an adoptive mama of one little tot from China and another on the way.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Adoption Scoop

So many of you may be thinking, "so what's going on with their adoption anyway". I'll share the scoop on how the whole process works.

Basically, this is how it all works: You make the decision to adopt, you apply to an agency, you have your life examined under a microscope, you get approval from the agency, you apply to Homeland Security to approve you, you submit your paperwork to China to approve you, you get a referral and then you go to China to pick up your child. So how could that take 2 + years?!

Once you submit your paperwork to China and are approved, you get what's called a Log In Date, known in the land of adoption as LID, and begin the wait. Our LID is 12/12/05. Our entire life since that date has been revolving around that one day in history upon which our future family balances.

The Chinese Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) is responsible for matching a child for every applicant/dossier. Once a family is matched with a child, it's called a referral. The CCAA notifies your adoption agency to let them know that a referral has been made then the agency gives you the "call". BINGO! This is what every parent who is in the waiting stage is patiently longing to receive -- so much so that the FED EX delivery person usually gets tackled upon delivery of the referral or any package leading up to that date for that matter. Poor guy...or gal.

In 2005, the CCAA was averaging a match of 2 months worth of LID's for every month. Back when we started the adoption process in June 2005, the wait from LID to referral was only 7 months. Over the past two years, the process has continued to slow for whatever reasons, and we are now at a 19 month wait and counting from LID to referral time. The CCAA has processed all LID's through 11/7/05 (as of last week). So as you can see, we are right around the corner. However, we don't know how many months it will take for them to process the 36 days of LID's still standing between us and our referral. Nor do we know how may dossiers there are, as we've heard rumors that November 2005 was a huge month of dossiers. As of the recent batch, it took a month for them to process a mere 6 days worth of LID's.

So here we are, waiting. Trying to reserve all sanity despite the setbacks. Trying to remember that there is purpose in the wait. That we are not waiting in vain. That at the end of the wait is a daughter who needs us as much as we need her.